Anchorman 2 trailer: Ron Burgundy is back – and it’s kind of a big deal

Will Ferrell and the Channel 5 news team make headlines once again, as they find their place in 1980s New York

The debut full-length trailer for Anchorman 2 has hit the web, with Ron Burgundy and his team of eccentric news types relocating from San Diego to New York at the start of the 80s.

The new film, which arrives more than nine years after the release of 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, sees Will Ferrell’s moustachioed lothario/sex pest transferring to a new 24-hour news channel in the Big Apple. As he tells his recruiter: “I’m going to do the thing that God put Ron Burgundy on this Earth to do: have salon-quality hair and read the news.”

Fans of the original will be pleased to note that birdbrained weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), fashion-obsessed field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and chauvinistic sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) have all followed their anchor to the Atlantic coast, and the new film will also find room for Christina Applegate as fellow news presenter Veronica Corningstone. This time around, however, Burgundy seems to be more interested in “romancing” a new colleague, played by Meagan Good. At a dinner at her home, it is strongly hinted that his comprehension of racial politics is even more primitive than his understanding of feminism proved back in sunny San Diego.

There’s also love (of a kind) for Tamland, in the form of an appropriately dimwitted new wife, played by Bridesmaids’ Kristen Wiig. They share a certain connection, but who can tell if it’s a romantic one? Over dinner, he tells her: “Your hair looks like wet popcorn.” She responds: “I like the parts of your face that are covered in skin.”

Anchorman: The Legend Continues also features Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear, while there are said to be cameos from Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Jim Carrey, among others. The new trailer also features James Marsden, perhaps portraying a younger rival newsman, who gets short shrift from Burgundy: “He’s not that great,” he says, in a not-so-withering aside that is immediately repeated, loudly, by Brick, for the benefit of its target.

The new film, directed by a returning Adam McKay from a screenplay he wrote with Ferrell, arrives in cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic on 20 December.